Daniel Webster to Mrs. J. W. Page-The Morning.

called " son of the morning." But the morning itself few people, inhabitants of cities, know any thing about. Among all our good people of Boston, not one in a thousand sees the sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the morning. Their idea of it is, that it is that part of the day which comes along after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak, or a piece of toast. With them morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun, a new waking up of all that has life, from a sort of temporary death, to behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth; it is only a part of the domestic day, belonging to breakfast, to reading the newspapers, answering notes, sending the children to school, and giving orders for dinner. The first faint streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east which the lark springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and red, till at length the "glorious sun is seen, Regent of day;" this they never enjoy, for this they never see.

Beautiful descriptions of the morning abound in all languages, but they are the strongest perhaps in those of the east, where the sun is so often an object of worship. King David speaks of taking to himself "the wings of the morning." This is highly poetical and beautiful. The "wings of the morning" are the beams of the rising sun. Rays of light are wings. It is thus said that the Sun of Righteousness shall arise," with healing in his wings;" a rising sun which shall scatter light, and health, and joy, throughout the universe.

Milton has fine descriptions of morning, but not so many as Shakespeare, from whose writings pages of the most beautiful images, all founded on the glory of the morning, might be filled.

I never thought that Adam had much advantage of us from

Daniel Webster to Mrs. J. W. Page-The Morning.

66

The manifestations of

new every morning"

having seen the world while it was new. the power of God, like His mercies, are and "fresh every evening." We see as fine risings of the sun as Adam ever saw, and its risings are as much a miracle now as they were in his day, and I think a good deal more, because it is now a part of the miracle that for thousands and thousands of years he has come to his appointed time, without the variation of a millionth part of a second. Adam could not tell how this might be !

I know the morning; I am acquainted with it and I love it, fresh and sweet as it is; a daily new creation, breaking forth and calling all that have life, and breath, and being, to new adoration, new enjoyments, and new gratitude.*

*

*

To-morrow we leave for Raleigh, at an hour which the world calls "morning." The air is fine, quite cool enough, and dry. What struck me last evening was the dryness of the night air. Of all the cities of the Atlantic, south, this is probably the finest for elevation, situation, handsome houses and public buildings, and prospects of growth.

Be kind enough to give or send our love to your husband and children. DANIEL WEBSTER.

Yours affectionately,

* Mr. Webster's correspondence is full of evidence of the genuineness of his appreciation of morning. The following passage occurs in a letter to Mr. Blatchford (Vol. 2, Private Correspondence, p. 262):

MARSHFIELD, Tuesday morning, five o'clock, Dec. 7, 1847. It is a beautiful, clear, cold, still morning. I rose at four o'clock, and have looked forth. The firmament is glorious. Jupiter and Venus are magnificent, "and stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole." I wish I could once see the constellations of the South, though I do not think they can excel the heavens which are over our heads. An hour or two hence we shall have a fine sunrise. The long twilights of this season of the year make the sun's rising a slow and beautiful progress. About an hour hence these lesser lights will begin to pale their ineffectual fires.

Dr. James Alexander to Dr. Hall-Description of Oxford.

II.--DESCRIPTION OF OXFORD,

Dr. James Alexander to Dr. Hall.

OXFORD, September 26th, 1851.

I came here to dinner yesterday from Liverpool, 176 miles. We touched Rugby village, about a mile from the school. It is vacation here, which is bad; but the claustral silence, and venerable solitude, and regal ecclesiastical state of this monastic city of palaces, is surely unique. The impression is that of an awful dream. You have read so long and so much about Oxford that I should think it idle to repeat what is in a score of books. I will set down some incoherences not in print.

Oxford is larger, greater, and lordlier than Cambridge. It has more colleges-more large colleges-and an aggregate of architectural glories beyond Cambridge; but Oxford has nothing like King's College, Cambridge, and little like Trinity, and no grounds like those of the last named. There is a family-likeness in the two towns, but Oxford is more antique, civic, mediæval, and proud. Cambridge has incomparably the more beautiful. site. There is no chapel in Oxford, or the world, like King's at Cambridge. There is no hall at Cambridge like Christ Church here.

The turf is close-shaven, cut every few days, rolled and swept; and is unlike any thing known among us, the moist climate favoring grass. Flowers abound, not only in the landscape gardening of the immense college greens, but in the windows of fellows. Some of the quadrangles here are not green, but gravelled. Christ Church meadow is surrounded by a walk of a mile, and elms three centuries old. You may lose yourself in the groves and thickets of some of those river-gardens. I learn

Dr. James Alexander to Dr. Hall-Description of Oxford.

that the "men" seldom prefer them to the streets. The halls or refectories are, as a whole, less regal than at Cambridge, except only Christ Church, where they daily provide for three hundred in term. Around these are portraits, generally full length, of great members. The painted glass windows in the chapels are by far the best I have met with, especially five Flemish windows in New College chapel (William of Wyckham's). The feeling in these cloisters, "quods," and parks (where deer come to your hand), is that of absolute sequestration from the world. Pusey's house, in one of the inner corners of Christ Church, is just the spot to generate such fancies as his. The system here, though inexpressibly fascinating, is out of harmony with the age. In every buttery-entrance where you look to espy a monk under the black honey-combed arches, you see the placards of "Time Tables of N. W. Railway." The present warden of All Souls (where there are none not fellows), is the first married warden. The pressure of the age will certainly bring collapse on these outworn cenobitic shells. I feel it every moment in a country where steam affects every inch, and trains thunder by some places twenty in a day. The agitation about exclusive privileges and overgrown foundations every year, shakes down part of the old pile, as in regard to the income of bishops, by the late act. A clergyman here is regarded everywhere with a deference unknown anywhere else. But as a class, they evidently feel very fully that they are on their good behavior, and that public opinion cannot be disregarded. Some, I believe many, are laboring to gain good will to the church in the best of all ways.

It would consume pages, and emulate guide-books, to tell of college chapel after chapel, halls, gardens, portraits, statues,

Dr. James Alexander to Dr. Hall-Description of Oxford.

libraries, and cloisters. Books of great size are taken up with this. Dr. Routh, author of the Reliquiæ Sacræ, Master of Magdalen College, has his portrait in the Bodleian, aet. 96. He is the oldest living Oxonian. The general effect produced by Oxford is soothing to my mind in a high degree. Such selfcontained wealth of learning, such seclusion from the stir of life, such yielding of every thing to learned honors, such architectural glory, such libraries, such lawns, such trees, such prizes held out to studious ambition, such histories of past genius, such mighty and beloved names, such costly display of taste, such approaches to what Rome was and would again be, exist here only and at Cambridge, and more here than there. But it all strikes me as a tree whose root is dead in the earth, vast, green, and lovely, but destined to die presently. I doubt whether the glory has not already passed away. The true Oxonian spirit is that of Newman and Pusey; but it is not of the age. Such a chapel as Christ College, which has lately been repaired at an expense of $90,000, is fitted to absorb a young man in reveries, but they are of an age which cannot live again. My hopes rise beyond what I am able to report during this rapid tour; that God is working by new agencies, and a new zeitgeist, and our new world, to bring in a new kingdom. So far from letting my intense and scarce excusable fondness for the relics of darker ages tempt me to wish them back again, or try to imitate them, I am even more filled with a sense of the gigantic progress of the modern arts and civilization. One day at the exhibition, one day at Birmingham and Manchester, or one day on any one trunk of English railways, is worth volumes to awaken expectation. I have meditated, I trust not unusefully, amidst objects which have the odor of past ages. My reigning sentiment,